The base cards are all so similar, that there is no reason to show a bunch of them. All have a player shot, the game number for the team, and a caption that may or may not make any sense. The back gives a line score, game blurb, and division standings.

Here is card #1 (ATL1) for the Atlanta Braves. The caption would make you think that the starting pitcher (Tim Hudson, shown) won the game. No. It was a no decision in a Braves loss. There are nearly 5,000 other cards that fit this exact style. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Inserts and parallels

What would a bloated base set be without an equally bloated parallel? The Gold parallels have a large gold foil 2008 emblazoned on the front. Otherwise, they are identical to the base cards. Here is a card showing Griffey with the Reds.

The Yankee Stadium Legacy cards commemorate the closure of Yankee Stadium by recognizing every Yankee game played in the building. Each card shows a standout player from the game. This is a Roger Maris example. A chunk of my dozen YSL cards had Joe Pepitone on them.

Here are two All-Star Game cards. All the backs show the same incomplete line score from the 2008 15-inning All-Star game.

A signed card in every box – Seasonal Signatures. Here is mine.

Comments

collation
Collation shouldn’t be an issue is the box gives less than 10% of an entire set. I didn’t get any duplicates, but the collation was still weird. The last third of each pack consisted of cards numbered in the 3000s. The middle third was cards in the 500s, 800s, or 1100s. The first third was less predictable but was most often from the 2000s. For a set that goes to 4,890, I didn’t get a single card above 3,640 in the entire box. That means I didn’t get a card from the highest numbered 25% of the whole set.

Gold parallel
I don’t like the idea of a parallel set that is so huge, but everyone has parallels. I get it. What surprised me is that my Gold parallels were consecutively numbered from 74 to 96 (23 cards). My 24th Gold parallel was #215. Nuts.

Yankee Stadium Legacy inserts
YSL cards were sprinkled through just about all of Upper Deck’s 2008 products. I don’t get these cards. If I was a Yankees fan, maybe I would. My feeling is that these cards just take away from a base card that I would have otherwise received. If 4,890 cards wasn’t too big, the 6,661 in YSL is definitely too big. Silly.

All-Star Game inserts
These cards are fine, but they highlight a problem with the massive 4,890-card base set. Each box can only give 6-7% of a base set but over 10% of the All-Star Game set. The ASG inserts are actually more common than the base cards. That’s backwards.

Seasonal Signatures inserts
No problems here. Most players aren’t exactly household names, but Upper Deck did shell out some money and get both A-Rod and Junior in the set.

card feel
I love the feel of these cards. They are very slick. Maybe I’ve been handling too many cards from the 90s, but these feel nice.

Conclusion

This could be such a cool product. I’ve already had a post on what I would do differently, so I get into it again here. It’s too bad that Upper Deck is out of MLB because I would have liked to have seen them take another crack at this concept.